I love Shakespeare, and was intrigued at how "Romeo and Juliet:Sealed with a Kiss" would turn out. I did hear from people it was a disgrace to Shakespeare, but I have been known to disagree with critics and the IMDb ratings, so I gave this a chance. It wasn't absolutely repulsive, but it didn't quite click with me. The best asset of the film is the animation. The backgrounds are fluid and colourful and the characters with the exception of the Prince were well drawn. Considering the animation was done by one man, Phil Nibbelink, it was quite impressive visually. The story pretty much follows the storyline of the play, except it is about seals, plus some (I think) pointless scenes with Friar Lawrence and a shark, and the voice acting was on the whole decent. However, there are a lot of things wrong with it. I personally didn't care for the music. I love good music in animated films, but here I found the songs forgettable and bland, and the incidental music felt misplaced. I will say I liked one or two of the characters, Romeo and Juliet are appealing enough and the Kissing Fish is really cute. However, Friar Lawrence is not the wise caring character I associate him with, and I do not know why the Nurse was omitted when she provides the most effective source of parental love in the play. In my opinion, I didn't like the character of the Prince at all, I didn't like how he was drawn and his voice was too monotonic for my liking. Worst of all was the script, constant misuse of the Shakespeare language and Mercutio's jokes went well overboard, and especially in his death scene they weren't even funny. Overall, this movie was okay but I don't recommend it. 4/10 Bethany Cox
